Saturday, January 27, 2018

Staunton, January 26 – Many in
Moscow and the West view the Belarusianization of Belarus as certain to have fateful
consequences for that country, with the former seeing Minsk’s moves in this
direction as putting Belarus on the road to a Ukrainian situation Russia would
need to address and the latter seeing it as a step to Minsk’s escape from
Moscow’ control.

According to Petr Ruditsky, BISS
academic director and the author of the report, four developments have pushed
the Belarusian leader away from his earlier hostility to and oppression of
Belarusian symbols and language to a “soft” Belarusianization now.They include:

·“Growing
economic and information pressure on Lukashenka from Russia.”

·“The
example of other post-Soviet authoritarian leaders regarding the strengthening
of national identity.”

·“The
partial depoliticization of the discourse of ‘rebirth’” that had been dominant
among the opposition.

·“Lukashenka
and his entourage have taken note that an appeal to national values gives
definite image benefits in relations with the West.”

Despite
those pressures, Ruditsky says, “it is improbable that Belarusianization will
ever become for Lukashenka an independent value, that is, something more than
an achievement of other goals.”

One
reason he has found it easier to make the shift, the BISS expert says, is that
Belarusian business by its choice to increase its use of the national language
has changed the nature of Belarusianness for Minsk and made it easier for
Lukashenka to accept than it would ever be for him to act on the messages of
the opposition.

In the last five or six years, the
BISS author says, the Soviet, statist and Russian-speaking national “idea”
Lukashenka had promoted when he hoped to head a union state has been pushed
aside in favor of a more “natural version of Belarusian nationalism” based on
the preservation of the national language and national symbols and outreach to the
Belarusian diaspora.

“’The soft Belarusianization’ which
we see on the streets of Belarusian cities now is the result of an unplanned
coming together of the movement of public activists, business an the powers in
approximately the same direction. This process has a long history, and thus it
isn’t accidental or ephemeral.” Consequently, it is likely to continue.

But, and this Ruditsky repeatedly stresses,
this isn’t likely to lead to a broad, intensive and “’hard’” move toward
Belarusianization under Lukashenka.Statist
rather than national symbols will remain in place, and Russian will continue to
be one of the state languages and be widely used.

That is because, he concludes, “national
just like Western European values are for [Lukahsenka] ‘a foreign language,’
one far from that to which he became accustomed in Soviet times and with which
he still feels comfortable.”